AP settles copyright suit with PR firm after winning fair use ruling

Serving up news clips: Fine for Google, a no-no for others.

A copyright dispute between the Associated Press and an online news-clipping service, Meltwater News, has ended with a settlement. The parties have agreed to partner up and deliver news products.

"There is more to be gained by working together to develop new markets and reaching new customers than can be achieved through adversarial paths," said Meltwater CEO Jorn Lyseggen. "We are eager to forge a strong relationship with AP."

While the talk is conciliatory, it looks like Meltwater lost this lawsuit. The agreement came after a judge ruled against Meltwater on a key fair use issue in March. While financial terms of the settlement aren't revealed, a "partnership" in this case means the AP is getting paid by the clipping service, whereas before it was not. Meltwater initially said it would appeal, but it appears to have dropped that plan.

The dispute was a closely watched one in the copyright world. Meltwater argued it was basically acting as a search engine, just taking small snippets of news and pointing its customers to links to the full source. The AP said that Meltwater's news alerts went well beyond fair use and that the PR service was a threat to its own licensing businesses. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Communications and Computer Industry Association (CCIA), both of which favor a broader view of fair use, filed briefs siding with Meltwater. Several prominent newspapers including The New York Times sided with the AP.

In a blog post today, CCIA reports that European litigation between Meltwater and news agencies is ongoing, and this could potentially have broader impact. In that case, end-users are being implicated in licensing demands.

This leaves in place a murky precedent over what kind of Internet searching is fair use. Why are Google's news snippets allowable and "transformative," while snippets created by a PR agency like Meltwater are banned? "In a nutshell, apparently because [Meltwater's service] was not public and not very successful at getting its customers to click through to the original articles," wrote two EFF lawyers reflecting on the "disappointing ruling" in March.

The judge differentiated Meltwater from "legitimate" online services. But battles over what constitutes a "legitimate" search engine are likely to continue in the wake of this ruling—especially when the cases result in additional revenue for news services like the AP.

22 Reader Comments

The difference? Meltwater could disappear and AP's eyeball time would be no worse off. If Google decided to not list AP stories in their searches the AP (and their newspaper subscribers) would see substantially fewer readers.

Google's not interested in listing stories without the snippets so to keep the referrals from Google going the snippets must be allowed.

The difference? Meltwater could disappear and AP's eyeball time would be no worse off. If Google decided to not list AP stories in their searches the AP (and their newspaper subscribers) would see substantially fewer readers.

Google's not interested in listing stories without the snippets so to keep the referrals from Google going the snippets must be allowed.

This. They just can't force a settlement out of Google like they can with Meltwater.

This is sad, but at least it's a settlement and not a precedent setting decision.

I couldn't care a whit about either the AP or Meltwater, but I think it's fairly clear that Meltwater's use should have fallen under fair use, and that the AP was merely feeling peeved that they weren't getting the cut of the pie they wanted, fair use or not. In fact, the AP even made clear at one point that this wasn't so much about copyright per se but instead about the fact that Meltwater's service competed with one of the AP's own similar search service.

The March ruling in favor of AP was ridiculous: it basically stood as protecting a business case all but regardless of the fair use issue, simply because the AP had "favorable" licensing terms it had given other organizations. What a load of crock, and completely undermines the point of fair use, and the court's directive. If the court had even ruled that Meltwater's excerpts were too long as compared to the AP articles to constitute fair use, even that would at least have been understandable. Instead we have a ruling that basically amounts to "because the AP has a business case for the use Meltwater is engaging in, we're going to throw out various fair use principles because they're inconvenient to seeing the AP get more money/continue to get money in the way they previously had from similar services."

Granted, Meltwater did shoot themselves in the foot by degrees with how they presented their service (essentially as a news bite service rather than more purely news monitoring/aggregate news data informatics service) but even with fair use being an affirmative defense, that still should not have weighed as heavily on the ruling as it apparently did.

If a lede carries "too much" information, value, and content as relates to the story for reading the rest of the story to be worthwhile, then that should really be the AP's problem... not Fair Use's problem, as the March ruling essentially makes it.

As mentioned in the article, Meltwater is not a free search engine/aggregator like Google News is. Since users have to pay Meltwater, it seems reasonable for AP to want a share of the revenues generated by linking to their content.

Actually just looked at their web site. Yuck. They offer things like "Cultivate vibrant social communities," "Increase your online intelligence", and other PR buzzwords that make me want to vomit.

As mentioned in the article, Meltwater is not a free search engine/aggregator like Google News is. Since users have to pay Meltwater, it seems reasonable for AP to want a share of the revenues generated by linking to their content.

Actually just looked at their web site. Yuck. They offer things like "Cultivate vibrant social communities," "Increase your online intelligence", and other PR buzzwords that make me want to vomit.

As compared to Google, I think this is a distinction without a difference. Google is getting paid too, just not by the end user. And Google is getting paid a lot more than Meltwater. I guess you could argue that it's not direct revenue for Google via Google News, but if it didn't have some positive impact on its bottom line then Google wouldn't be doing it.

It seems to me that it is for the good of all if the content clippers and aggregators can come to mutually beneficial financial agreements with the content producers. That way they aren't just acting as parasites, feeding off the host's body to survive. The thing about parasites is if the host dies, they die, too.

As mentioned in the article, Meltwater is not a free search engine/aggregator like Google News is. Since users have to pay Meltwater, it seems reasonable for AP to want a share of the revenues generated by linking to their content.

Actually just looked at their web site. Yuck. They offer things like "Cultivate vibrant social communities," "Increase your online intelligence", and other PR buzzwords that make me want to vomit.

I didn't see anything about revenue, payment or anything else relating to money in the fair use clause the last time I read it.

As mentioned in the article, Meltwater is not a free search engine/aggregator like Google News is. Since users have to pay Meltwater, it seems reasonable for AP to want a share of the revenues generated by linking to their content.

Actually just looked at their web site. Yuck. They offer things like "Cultivate vibrant social communities," "Increase your online intelligence", and other PR buzzwords that make me want to vomit.

I didn't see anything about revenue, payment or anything else relating to money in the fair use clause the last time I read it.

Fair use is a legal defense, not a right. I point this out to people who steal my content.

As mentioned in the article, Meltwater is not a free search engine/aggregator like Google News is. Since users have to pay Meltwater, it seems reasonable for AP to want a share of the revenues generated by linking to their content.

Actually just looked at their web site. Yuck. They offer things like "Cultivate vibrant social communities," "Increase your online intelligence", and other PR buzzwords that make me want to vomit.

I didn't see anything about revenue, payment or anything else relating to money in the fair use clause the last time I read it.

Fair use is a legal defense, not a right. I point this out to people who steal my content.

As mentioned in the article, Meltwater is not a free search engine/aggregator like Google News is. Since users have to pay Meltwater, it seems reasonable for AP to want a share of the revenues generated by linking to their content.

Actually just looked at their web site. Yuck. They offer things like "Cultivate vibrant social communities," "Increase your online intelligence", and other PR buzzwords that make me want to vomit.

I didn't see anything about revenue, payment or anything else relating to money in the fair use clause the last time I read it.

Fair use is a legal defense, not a right. I point this out to people who steal my content.

Since fair use is part of copyright law, that would mean copyright isn't a right either, it's a legal offense.

As mentioned in the article, Meltwater is not a free search engine/aggregator like Google News is. Since users have to pay Meltwater, it seems reasonable for AP to want a share of the revenues generated by linking to their content.

Actually just looked at their web site. Yuck. They offer things like "Cultivate vibrant social communities," "Increase your online intelligence", and other PR buzzwords that make me want to vomit.

I didn't see anything about revenue, payment or anything else relating to money in the fair use clause the last time I read it.

The four tests are:1. Purpose of copying2. Nature of the work copied3. Amount and significance of the work copied4. Effect on the market.

Under the first test, commercial copying is given less deference than educational use. If Meltwater kept people away from AP, as apparently happened if we believe the article concerning click-throughs, then Meltwater fails the fourth test. I have no way to know whether Meltwater copied more than the three or so lines Google copies.

The difference? Meltwater could disappear and AP's eyeball time would be no worse off. If Google decided to not list AP stories in their searches the AP (and their newspaper subscribers) would see substantially fewer readers.

Google's not interested in listing stories without the snippets so to keep the referrals from Google going the snippets must be allowed.

As mentioned in the article, Meltwater is not a free search engine/aggregator like Google News is. Since users have to pay Meltwater, it seems reasonable for AP to want a share of the revenues generated by linking to their content.

And, given how small they are, I could well see Meltwater not paying AP anything. AP won, but could have lost on appeal.

By convincing little Meltwater not to appeal, this "precedent" now stands. I think that is worth more to AP and other media companies.

That subtitle is unclear in light of the subject at hand -- I thought that Google was fined for something related to news clips, and is the reason I read the article. Better would be "Okay for Google, a no-no for others." That gets the point across without implying Google was fined.

Fair use is a legal defense, not a right. I point this out to people who steal my content.

Since fair use is part of copyright law, that would mean copyright isn't a right either, it's a legal offense.

"Defense" is the legal term for it. When you copy or distribute something you don't have the legal right to copy or distribute, you violate copyright. However if it was fair use, you have a defense for what you did. You violated copyright but did so defensibly.

Fair use is a legal defense, not a right. I point this out to people who steal my content.

Since fair use is part of copyright law, that would mean copyright isn't a right either, it's a legal offense.

"Defense" is the legal term for it. When you copy or distribute something you don't have the legal right to copy or distribute, you violate copyright. However if it was fair use, you have a defense for what you did. You violated copyright but did so defensibly.

By that logic, if you kill someone in self-defense, you're a murderer.

I didn't see anything about revenue, payment or anything else relating to money in the fair use clause the last time I read it.

Hello? What do you think "commercial nature" means? How about effect on "potential market or value?"

Quote:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;2. the nature of the copyrighted work;3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Based on previous coverage of this dispute on Ars Technica, I thought AP's problem was that Meltwater was caching entire articles for their customers, even after AP hid them behind a paywall! They were effectively charging customers for AP content, but not paying AP for that! Not only did this fail to drive traffic to AP, but it also undermined AP's current business model of distributing many current news articles free of charge (with advertising) but allowing access to old news articles only for paid subscribers. (As AP is copyright holder, they have the right to pursue this business model if they want to. Of course, if an individual wants to exercise their "fair use rights" by clipping one or two entire articles while freely published for use in a university lecture or such like, there's no problem with that; but if some company like Meltwater wants to do this on an industrial scale with practically the whole of the internet, for a profit; we shouldn't be surprised if AP has a problem with this.)

Fair use is a legal defense, not a right. I point this out to people who steal my content.

Since fair use is part of copyright law, that would mean copyright isn't a right either, it's a legal offense.

"Defense" is the legal term for it. When you copy or distribute something you don't have the legal right to copy or distribute, you violate copyright. However if it was fair use, you have a defense for what you did. You violated copyright but did so defensibly.

By that logic, if you kill someone in self-defense, you're a murderer.

I don't know where you got the idea the logic had anything to do with law...

Based on previous coverage of this dispute on Ars Technica, I thought AP's problem was that Meltwater was caching entire articles for their customers, even after AP hid them behind a paywall! They were effectively charging customers for AP content, but not paying AP for that!

This is not what Meltwater was doing, nor what Meltwater was being sued for.

Quote:

Of course, if an individual wants to exercise their "fair use rights" by clipping one or two entire articles while freely published for use in a university lecture or such like, there's no problem with that; but if some company like Meltwater wants to do this on an industrial scale with practically the whole of the internet, for a profit; we shouldn't be surprised if AP has a problem with this.)

Right, but there is an important distinction between activities that a copyright holder has a problem with, and activities which are protected by copyright law.

As for the March ruling which judged that Meltwater's use was not a fair use, it seems somewhat troubling, in certain respects, but overall it seems (to this amateur) to be a well-reasoned one. The most problematic aspects are covered by the EFF post linked at the end of the ars technica article, so I won't bother to repeat them here.